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Jack Thompson Tossed Out Of Court
dmouritsendk writes "According to a story at IGN, Jack Thompson has been removed from the lawsuit filed by the families of two murdered police officers vs. Rockstar, Sony and game retailers. While previously he stated that he had withdrawn, details have now come out that the judge actually pulled his temporary license to practice law in Alabama. The reason for all this? Thompson's behavior." From the article: "The removal of Thompson from the case does not necessarily represent the end of the trial as his long-time associate Ray Reiser will assume the role of lead counsel for the case's plaintiffs. Not one to take such things lying down, Thompson fired back at Judge Moore by claiming the the judge has 'has violated... The Alabama Canons of Judicial Ethics by his unfortunate, improper, and prejudicial acts in this case, at the expense of three bereaved Alabama families.'"
Can anyone explain who this guy is?
--------- I have no signature
Hit the road, Jack.
Any chance we can, as Red from The Shawshank Redemption so eloquently put "have him do the airdance before the first May flowers push up out the ground?"
That would inspire the typical "Who the hell IS this guy?" response.
This isn't the same as him being barred from practicing law PERIOD, but I just couldn't help myself...
*plays Final Fantasy IV victory fanfare and dances*
"Apparently so, but suppose you throw a coin enough times. Suppose one day, it lands on its edge."
Oh, crap...
public class null extends java applet { System.out.print ("Tabula Rasa"); }
GM Judge Moore banned Jack Thompson from the Alabama realm of the controversial MMORPG "Reality" today. The game "Reality" allows players to engage in such controversial activities as genocide, murder, theft, and mis-representation.
Leave it to Jack Thompson to get kicked out of Alabama for improper behavior.
Normality is now: overrated.
I love how while reading about this on the main page, there was a giant GTA banner beside this story.
The article mentions Judge Moore, and this is Alabama. Is this the same Judge Moore that was removed from office for refusing to get rid of his statue of the ten commandments? If so, I say his sanction of Jack Thompson is obviously correct. It takes one (wacko) to know one.
In a prime example of karma, the defense submitted some of Thompson's own press releases to the Court as evidence of why he was unfit.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Do you:
a) Accept their judgement with good grace
b) Grudgingly accept the judgement but state that you believe it to be in error
c) Accuse the judge of breaking the law, of being biased against your clients and of generally being incompetant
If you're Jack Thompson you probably also do d) File a lawsuit against the judge for dismissing you.
..... a cup of hot coffee to help him calm down.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
System.out.print ("and don't you come back... no more... no more... no more... no more.");
public class null extends java applet { System.out.print ("Tabula Rasa"); }
Can anyone explain who this guy is?
I don't think that the parent post is necessarily a troll. If you haven't been following the gaming press or reading Slashdot every day, he's not that hard to be unaware of. My mother certainly doesn't know who he is.
Jack Thompson is a lawyer who, for one reason or another, has attempted to attack violent games in the media.
It's actually getting to be very hard to obtain any accurate, netural information on him at all -- so many of the people online play video games and are scared of what they think that he might push through that almost all information is biased -- the Wikipedia article on him is definitely not particularly neutral, and the gaming press dislikes him for obvious reasons.
Combine that with the fact that the man is a political conservative and a Christian (pretty obvious from his website) and given to rather inaccurate rhetoric, and you basically wind up with every article or online writing about him becoming a flamefest.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
Either way: Just desserts.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
...that Slashdot didn't jump on this when GameSpot covered it... 4 days ago.
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
Jack Thompsons incorrigible behavior, his mumbling incoherence, his fishing hats, aviator frames and cigarette holders have cause him to be tossed out of court only to be replaced by Hunter S. Thompson
Different Moore. Ten Commandments was Roy Moore, this is James Moore.3 59.html/d ments/
http://www.livejournal.com/users/gamepolitics/126
and
http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/11/13/moore.tencomman
Jack Thompson will soon issue a "prize" of $10,000 for somebody to code a game in which Judge Moore is flogged then killed violently. Then he'll tell Judge Moore it was meant as satire.
get a link that DOESN'T include frigging flash ads as part of the deal? My system as set up will not continue on to the article itself and, yeah, some of us actually RTFA ;-)
Dream as if you'll live forever.
Live as if you'll die tomorrow.
~Anonymous~
Was it good, bad?
Dude. It was CSI. It was bad.
My spoon is too big.
<baptist class="southern" politics="conservative">
Just so we're all clear on this, please do not infer that his chosen affiliation with various political or religious groups means those groups want anything to do with him.
I look forward to the upcoming religious holiday, visiting the church of my youth, and logging some serious GTA:SA time. And while we're at it, the Kansas School Board can kiss my evolved butt.
</baptist>
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
And it was probably the most contrived, ridiculous CSI episode I've ever seen, and thats saying a bit. The guy who "makes the game" - CEO of the company and apparently also the game designer - won't tell them the games storyline, because "it's proprietary"? There's no gamefaqs.com in whatever planet CSI is set on? And the "twist" that the game designer is actually the secret "Wizard" that all the "players" turn their "points" into? Please. And the justification is that it somehow drives sales of his game? Right.
Been searching all around and all I can find are the one-line summaries. I'd much prefer to hear the judge slapping Thompson around. Anybody have a link?
Normally I don't reply to AC's, but I'll bite.
You're right. I don't like him at all, but did you notice I said "neo-con"? Surely you've noticed the theocratic tilt the Republican party has taken. Jack just fits in with this Bible-thumping, alarmist majority, and yes, that angers me. And no, I'm not a Democrat, either, though now even they are starting to pander to religious groups.
Lesson my ass.
"Apparently so, but suppose you throw a coin enough times. Suppose one day, it lands on its edge."
It was really bad. One line in it [paraphrasing from memory]
:-)
"I'm not like that type [talking about murdering others], I'm not a gamer!"
It basically played on all the latest buzzwords and press. I know it's supposed to be fictional but they're clearly playing off recent events in the news and the least they could do is not show something as ridiculous as that.
They might as well have a story line [or a thousand] where some robe wearing muslim is planning to blow up an office complex or something
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Seriously, its like a contest between Jack Thompson, Sony, and the RIAA to see who can bury themselves the fastest while at the same time sustaining the most bullet wounds to their feet.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Don't forget the CEO also was an arms smuggler for the kids. They jacked a shipment of Mac-10s to supply the kids with weapons. It really was a ridiculous storyline, even for CSI: Miami.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
Notice that they didn't blame the game for causing the violence though. It was the scummy game publisher who put the kids up to it as a publicity stunt.
...given the story title I was hoping for something a little bit more, well, ballistic.
Jack Thompson, his brand of Christianity has as much to do with what they practice at the church down the street as McDonald's McFish sandwich does with the ocean
I resent that remark! The Filet-O-Fish is my favorite sandwich at McDonalds and is made from real fish. If you buy one, it probably comes out of the a little factory in Gloucester, Ma that also processes Gorton's premium fishsticks. It's a real fish product made here in the USA.
Besides, you never know what the "church down the street" might be saying. There are quite a few churches which have sermons against violence in video game. One of the biggest churches here in the Chicago burbs had a televised sermon against violence in movies and TV. Ironically, a couple months later they organized a group ticket sale for kids to see "The Passion" which is arguably the bloodiest most violent "snuff" flick I've ever seen (even if it was done in the style of a beautiful Italian art film).
Anyhow, the funniest thing about this whole Jack Thompson affair from my viewpoint (I work in video games and read TRST reports) is that usually when a game gets a lot of bad press for "ultra-realistic violence", the sales of the game actually go up.
And even if nothing happens to hiim, at least we now know where another litigious lunatic gets his inspiration from.
One is a scum-sucking bottom-dweller, and the other is a fish.
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
Maybe the judge bounced his ass out of there so that the trial would be about the plaintiff's case, rather than Jack's agenda?
Just a thought...
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
To be fair, last night's episode wasn't any more contrived or ridiculous than any other episode they've made.
And the "twist" that the game designer is actually the secret "Wizard" that all the "players" turn their "points" into? Please.
No, the "Wizard" was a college kid who played himself to death. The game designer hired another goon to sell the weapons to the kids. Did you actually pay any attention to the episode?
Did you notice that the episode was NOT full of moralizing, "These kinds of games are ruining America," etc? The closest it got was one of the characters saying "This is why I stopped playing this game at home." It was just another plot device. The writers of CSI are not out to "get" the video game industry. They are doing what they always do, which is to take current events and spin them into a crappy story line.
In fact, I think the episode did a slight service to the cause, by portraying the kids as junked-out psychos who took something too far, instead of poor innocents who were corrupted by evil video games. Geez, people get so worked up.
The tree is "The tree of the knowlege of Good and Evil", not just the tree of knowlege. Eating from that tree gave a "knowing" that certain things were good and bad. Suicide is not necessarily bad, but we got that knowledge from eating from that tree. Same with nudity, sex outside of marriage, and homosexuality. Fundamentalists keep eating from that tree.
He's part of the "no rules for us but strict rules for you" culture that in increasingly spreading - he thinks he should have a right to say anything but others shouldn't.
As another undergraduate psych major, I'd like to agree with the above post. Cut and pasting bits and pieces from DSM is a bad idea unless people understand what DSM is and how it works.
From the Wikipedia article: The DSM provides diagnostic categories and criteria for their diagnoses. The proper use of these requires clinical training, knowledge and skills to apply them. Their use by people without this background is likely to lead to an inappropriate application of diagnoses.
That about sums it up. It's not a layman's document.
Jack Thompson might well be completely batshit insane, but you can't make a diagnosis based on seeing him on the news and reading a couple of articles.
The point of golf is to acheive the lowest score possible on each hole. +5 would mean that it took 5 more strokes to put the ball in the whole than par which is terrible. In slashdot golf we should also aim for the lowest score like me, I'm quite positive I'll get modded -1, offtopic or not at all which would give me a large stroke advantage over your score.
You can call me the Jack Nicklaus of Slashdot.
english is way to easy
Remember those lists floated around after Columbine, warning parents and teachers what to look out for in potential school shooters? Things like depression, trouble with authority, stops hanging out with friends they had in grade school...things that every fucking teenager goes through at one point or another. This list is just like that.
I remember reading about the good folk at god hates fags. Seems at their core they are a fun loving family who consider it okay to hold noisy protests at the funerals of gays. Seems they believe that gays will burn in hell and they want to make sure that the grieving friends & relatives are aware of this. Lovely bunch.
-- Using the preview button since 2005